Grief Does Not Stay Where You Put It. It Waits, and It Compounds.

I used to believe that if enough time passed, an old loss simply stopped affecting you.

Unresolved grief does not work that way. It does not fade quietly in the background while life moves on. It waits. And if another loss arrives before the first one has been properly dealt with, it does not arrive alone. It comes up too, undiminished, at exactly the moment you have the least capacity to carry either.

I know this because it happened to me, twice, before I understood what I was actually living through.

The first loss.

I was thirteen when my mother left for a six week holiday. As she was leaving, something in me wanted to give her a hug and tell her I loved her. A more logical voice in my head told me not to make a fuss in front of everyone watching. She will be back in six weeks.

She did not come back. She died while she was away.

Not long afterwards, a well-meaning neighbour told me I mustn't cry, that I had to be strong for my brothers and sisters. She only said it once, but I believed her, and I repeated it to myself for years. Be strong. Keep busy. Give it time.

So that is what I did. I did not let myself cry, not properly. I stayed busy. I waited. What I did not know then is that none of that was healing. It was simply where I put the grief, so I could keep functioning. The grief did not go anywhere. It waited.

Seventeen years later.

I was thirty when my older brother died suddenly of a heart attack. He was barely a year and a half older than me.

It was already devastating on its own. But it did not arrive alone. Everything I had never properly dealt with from my mother's death, seventeen years earlier, came up with it. The grief I thought I had survived was still there, fully intact, and now I was carrying both at once.

The strategies that had got me through the first loss were nowhere near enough for two. Be strong, keep busy, give it time, had not actually resolved anything. It had simply delayed it. And delayed grief does not arrive smaller. It arrives at full strength, on top of whatever else has happened since.

For the first time, death stopped feeling like something that happened to other people, older people, people further along than me. It became real, and frightening, in a way it never had before. Death and mortality became very real. I started asking the big questions about life and what it all meant.

I also started struggling at work. Struggling to focus. Struggling to make decisions. Struggling to be present in the way my role required. The physical weight of carrying unresolved grief is real, even when you cannot name what you are carrying.

What I did not see in my sister.

While I was trying to make sense of everything that had come up, my younger sister was carrying something of her own. She had been carrying unresolved grief since she was five years old. None of us saw it. We assumed she was too young to be affected, that time would do for her what it was supposed to do for everyone.

From the outside, she seemed to be coping the best out of all of us. She was beautiful, tidy, capable, always putting other people first. That is often exactly what unresolved grief looks like in a child, and later in an adult. Not visible struggle, but a kind of quiet, practised coping that everyone around them mistakes for being genuinely alright.

When the real signs eventually appeared, none of us knew what we were looking at. We were too caught up in our own pain to recognise hers.

She died by suicide.

Lost in the maze.

What came after her death was the most complex grief I had ever carried, because it came with a list of decisions I would spend years wishing I could change.

There was a trip I was planning to take to India not long before, trying to find space to process everything that had already happened. My sister had a breakdown while I was preparing to leave, a delayed reaction to grief she had never dealt with. I almost cancelled. She persuaded me to go, telling me she was much better and that the rest of the family would be there. She was very persuasiveI let her persuade me.

Towards the end of my time in India, I tried to call her the night before I was due to fly home, to tell her I was feeling stronger and would be able to support her properly now. I could not get through. A logical voice told me not to worry, that she was safe, that I would see her tomorrow.

She was alive when I boarded my flight. She died before I landed.

For years afterwards, I sat with a list of if onlys. If only I had cancelled the trip. If only I had checked in more. If only the call had connected. If only I had understood mental health and grief properly at the time. I turned the blame over and over, at myself most of all, looking for somewhere it could finally rest.

This is what I now think of as being lost in the maze of grief. There are no signposts. No clear way out. You just keep walking the same corridors, asking the same unanswerable questions, certain that if you could only find the right turn, the pain would finally make sense and stop.

Two ways of looking at it.

What I have learned since is that there are two different ways to look at a loss like this, and only one of them leads anywhere.

The first is a blame mindset. Why did this happen? Who is responsible? What should have been done differently. These feel like important questions. They are not. Fixing blame changes nothing. It does not undo a single decision. All it does is keep you walking the same corridor of the maze, while life moves forward without you.

The second is an outcome frame. Where can I get help? What can I do now? What good can I bring out of this? Same loss. Completely different questions. Completely different direction. Completely different results.

That shift, from ‘Who is responsible? to ‘Where can I get help?, was the beginning of finding my way out.

What I wish I had known.

I did not have the knowledge, tools, or frameworks I have now. I did not know that grief I believed I had already dealt with could resurface, fully intact, the moment another loss arrived. I did not know that a delayed grief reaction could overwhelm someone who had seemed, by every visible measure, to be coping the best of all of us.

I have spent years since then learning everything I wish someone had handed me at the time. What actually causes grief to stay unresolved. What keeps people stuck in it, sometimes for decades. How to recognise it in someone who looks completely fine from the outside. And how to actually find your way out of the maze, step by step, rather than simply waiting and hoping it resolves on its own.

What I found was not a quick fix. It was a structured, step-by-step process built on knowledge, tools, and frameworks that helped me identify what I was actually carrying, name it properly, and process it in a way that no amount of time, busyness, or willpower ever could. For the first time, I had signposts. For the first time, the maze had an exit.

I am so thankful that I eventually found the right support to help me move forward and thrive again, both personally and professionally. To live with peace and purpose, rather than carrying that weight indefinitely. That is what I now call creating a life well lived.

Why I do this work.

I do not want anyone else to spend years lost in the maze of grief the way I did, with no signposts and no way out that I could see.

That is why I became a Grief Specialist. Not as a job I chose from a distance, but as the direct result of everything I have just told you. I am a living testament to the fact that there is hope beyond loss.

What to do next.

Not everyone reading this will be ready to act on it. Some of you will recognise something in this story and need time with it before doing anything else. That is completely fine.

But if you have ever believed an old loss was fully behind you, only to feel it return, fully intact, when something new happened, there are three places to start.

If you are not yet sure what you are carrying, the Hidden Wellbeing Gaps Quiz takes eight minutes and gives you a personalised starting point. It is free and confidential.

If you already know what you are carrying and want to understand it more precisely, the Grief Assessment is a more detailed tool for the reader who is ready to look directly at it.

If you are ready to talk, a free fifteen-minute clarity call with me will tell you whether your results show you may benefit from professional help or support. I can signpost you to the right resources. There is no obligation and no pressure.

If you are struggling right now, with suicidal thoughts, the Samaritans are available 24 hours a day on 116 123.